Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

callow

UK /ˈkæləʊ/ · US /ˈkæloʊ/ adjective, noun, proper noun

Forms callower callowest callows

  1. adjective (of a person) Immature, inexperienced, or naive.
  2. adjective (of a person) Having no hair; bald, bare, hairless.
  3. adjective (masonry) Of a brick: unburnt.
  4. adjective (ornithology) Of a young bird, or (part of) its body: having not developed feathers yet; featherless, unfledged; hence, of other animals or their bodies: having no fur or hair; furless, hairless, unfurred.
  5. adjective (figurative) Lacking life experience; immature, inexperienced, naive; also, of or relating to something immature or inexperienced. “Those three young men are particularly callow youths.”
  6. adjective In the life cycle of an animal: newly born or hatched; juvenile. “a callow bee”
  7. adjective (entomology) Synonym of teneral (“of certain insects or other arthropods such as spiders: lacking colour or firmness just after ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”)”).
  8. adjective (obsolete) Of land: having no vegetation; bare.
  9. noun (entomology) Synonym of teneral (“an insect or other arthropod such as a spider which has just undergone ecdysis (“shedding of the exoskeleton”) and so lacks colour or firmness”).
  10. noun (geology) An alluvial flat.
  11. noun (UK, regional, mining, archaic) The upper layer of rubble in a quarry which has to be removed to reach the material to be mined.
  12. noun (ornithology) A young bird which has not developed feathers yet; a nestling.
  13. noun (figurative) A person lacking life experience; an immature or naive person.
  14. noun (East Anglia) Synonym of topsoil (“upper layer of soil”).
  15. adjective (Ireland) Of land: low-lying and near a river, and thus regularly submerged.
  16. noun (Ireland) A low-lying meadow near a river which is regularly submerged.
  17. proper noun A surname.

Synonyms

green wet behind the ears artless childlike verdant clueless credulous dewy-eyed cute fleeceable foppotee guileless ingenuous innocent jejune Panglossian Panglossic quaint simple simple-hearted fledgling unfledged

Antonyms

experienced adultish grown up mature

Etymology

From Middle English calwe (“(adjective) bald; (noun) bald person”), from Old English calu, caluw (“without hair, bald, callow”), from Proto-West Germanic *kalu, from Proto-Germanic *kalwaz (“bald; bare, naked”), and then either:
* from Proto-Indo-European *gol(H)-wo- (“bald; bare, naked”), from *gelH- (“head; naked”); or
* from Latin calvus (“bald”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kl̥H- (“bald; naked”).
If not borrowed from Latin, Grimm’s law indicates that the Latin word is likely a false cognate, along with Persian کل (kal) and Sanskrit कुल्व (kulvá).
* Dutch kaal (“bald”)
* German kahl (“bald”)
* German Low German kahl (“bald”)
* Russian го́лый (gólyj, “bare, naked, nude”)
* Swedish kal, kalka (“bald”)
* West Frisian keal (“bald”)

From Irish caladh (“meadow by a riverbank”), from Old Irish calad (“shore, landing, port”), probably a noun use of calad (“hard”, adjective), from Proto-Celtic *kaletos (“cruel; hard; strong”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *ḱlH-eto- (“cold”) (in the sense of something frozen and thus hard), from an unclear root *ḱl(H)- or *kl(H)- (“hard”); or related to Proto-Germanic *halluz (“boulder, rock, stone”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kel- (“to cut, hew”). Perhaps influenced by Etymology 1 in some manner.

Webster’s 1913

  1. adjective Destitute of feathers; naked; unfledged.
  2. adjective Immature; boyish; "green"; as, a callow youth.
  3. noun A kind of duck. See Old squaw.

Etymology [OE. calewe, calu, bald, AS. calu; akin to D. kaal, OHG. chalo, G. Kuhl; cf. L. calvus.]

Etymology [Named from its note.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “callow”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details